When’s an OER not an OER?

MIT have published a text called Opening Up Education, but under a copyright license that is one step short of All Rights Reserved. MIT is just not getting the message are they? They are not really about open education at all!

On the other hand, Utah State University in collaboration with the Commonwealth of Learning and individual designers have published the OER Handbook. Available under a free and practically nonrestrictive license, in both a wiki and a printed and bound text on Lulu.

We are working on a number of other texts as we speak (not to mention videos and stuff all over the place!), all of it under CC By.

MIT should stop their work in “open courseware” and “open education” or risk influencing a second wave of OER developers to basically construct educational resources that may as well be All Rights Reserved and leave us in a position not much better than where we started.

Risks like the trend that MIT are setting necessitate a project like the Free Cultural Works Definition were it sets out to clearly delineate what is free and what is restrictive. It prevents by way of stating a principle, oganisations cashing in on the hard work of OER campaigners.

Copyright

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[…] September 18, 2008 Uncategorized Tags: oer, open Leigh Blackall reiterates in his blog, Learn Online, the need to make a distinction between certain OER projects. When MIT publish one it seems [OER]. […]

In working on our oer/ocw project this week (we are very close to getting final administrative approval!) I was struck by the fact that CC is not explicitly mentioned on a lot of opencourseware sites, and in fact some language on some sites, such as “retains the copyright” suggests the opposite. My understanding of CC is that, yes, the IP creator does retain the copyright, but at the same time CC fundamentally modifies the nature of the copyright’s inherent “all rights reserved” implications and limitations. I admit my understanding may be fuzzy to me, however, as I’ve not studied CC and IP restrictions or limitations extensively. I also understand that CC is not the only way to modify reserved rights, and so some institutions may shy away from marrying themselves to a single modified licensing organization.

This reminds me of an incident at the OCWC conference in Kyoto wherein representatives from China and Taiwan almost came to blows–literally–because China’s “opencourseware” was protected by traditional IP “copyright”, and they would not/could not license content under CC.

In our oer/ocw process we are focusing not on publishing things as “oer” or “ocw” but as “cc-licensed”. We have asked that administration allow faculty who author content as “work-for-hire” petition to license such content under CC, then give them the opportunity to publish any CC content at will as oer/ocw. My belief is that if we focus on the CC aspect everything else to fall in place naturally.